Muse, recount to me the reasons; what deity was offended, or what was the queen of the gods grieving, that she should drive a man extraordinary in his piety to undergo so many misfortunes, to endure so many hardships. Do the heavenly spirits have such passions?

O Muse, assist me and inspire my song, / the various causes and the crimes relate, / for what affronted majesty, what wrong / to injured Godhead, what offence so great / Heaven's Queen resenting, with remorseless hate, / could one renowned for piety compel / to brave such troubles, and endure the weight / of toils so many and so huge. O tell / how can in heavenly minds such fierce resentment dwell?

There was an ancient city; the Tyrian settlers held it: Carthage, standing afar opposite Italy and the mouths of the Tiber, rich in trade and very harsh in the study of war. Juno is said to have valued this one city more than all lands, even above Samos.

There stood a city, fronting far away / the mouths of Tiber and Italia's shore, / a Tyrian settlement of olden day, / rich in all wealth, and trained to war's rough lore, / Carthage the name, by Juno loved before / all places, even Samos.

But she had heard that an offspring, led by Trojan blood, would one day overturn the Tyrian citadels; from this would come a nation ruling widely and proud in war, for the destruction of Libya: thus the Fates spun out their destiny.

But she had heard, how men of Trojan seed / those Tyrian towers should level, how again / from these in time a nation should proceed, / wide-ruling, tyrannous in war, the bane / (so Fate was working) of the Libyan reign.

Saturn's daughter, fearing it, and remembering the protracted war which she had first waged at Troy on behalf of her beloved Argives -- the causes of her anger and her fierce grievances had still not died down in her soul.

Enraged by these things as well, she kept the Trojans, all that were left of the Greeks and indomitable Achilles, far away from Latium, tossed by the wide ocean; they wandered for many years, driven by the Fates, all around the seas.

So fired with rage, the Trojans' scanty train / by fierce Achilles and the Greeks unslain / she barred from Latium, and in evil strait / for many a year, on many a distant main / they wandered, homeless outcasts, tost by fate.